This invention relates generally to online advertising and in particular to selecting advertisements likely to be relevant to viewing users.
Online advertising allows advertisers to present viewing users with advertisements (ads) via web pages and/or applications. Advertisers use various methods of ad targeting to present viewing users with relevant ads to increase the likelihood that a viewing user interacts with an ad. For example, ad targeting increases the likelihood of a viewing user performing a conversion event, such as accessing a presented ad, visiting a web page associated with an advertiser, or otherwise responding to the ad. Hence, ad targeting may generate a greater demand and awareness for goods and services.
Ad targeting allows advertisers to present different advertisements to different groups of people, such as persons in a certain age demographic or persons having a particular set of characteristics. While conventional techniques for targeting advertisements allow presentation of an advertisement to a group or a category of users, conventional ad targeting techniques have limited ability to t to identify characteristics or preferences of the viewing user. Hence, conventional ad targeting methods are limited gathering information about a viewing user for use in targeting advertisements to the viewing user.